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Wikipedia editors revolt over SOPA blackout

by on18 January 2012



Why should we care?


Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has called for the online encyclopedia to go off-line in protest against SOPA, but he appears to have miffed the self appointed experts who acts as the outfit's editors.

According to Associated Press, the editors, whose job it is to make people they don't like disappear, they claim that protest of anti-piracy legislation could threaten the credibility of their work. No seriously. Robert Lawton, a Michigan computer consultant said that he was worried that suddenly the organisation is in the the role of advocacy, and that's a slippery slope. The next thing that will happen is that it will be blacked out because Wikipedia want to save the whales. Who cares if Wales dies eh? Oh, you said whales. Yes Robert we can understand why a fake penis expert would not care about the world's largest mammal being hunted to extinction to satisfy a demand for traditional food in Japan.

Wikipedia will shut down access to its English-language site for 24 hours beginning 4pm AEDT today. Instead of encyclopedia articles, visitors will see information about SOPA But it seems that the editors don't like the idea. Some have blacked out their own user profile pages, as if we read them, or resigned their administrative rights on the site, as if that will hurt anyone. Some think the site's decision to fighting censorship with censorship.

“How will the world continue to turn if I do not have the power to stop famous historians publishing facts online that disagree with me,” one editor did not tell us.

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales argues that the site can maintain neutrality in content even as it takes public positions. He said that the encyclopedia will always be neutral, but its community need not be, not when the encyclopedia is threatened.

But Wales idea of who makes up his “community” discounts the fact that they might be self-absorbed, social non-entities who get their kicks from telling people that they are wrong and have the power to enforce it.

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